


Ashes

by LadyNighteyes



Category: Radiant Historia
Genre: Angst, Betrayal, Canonical Character Death, Gen, M/M, POV Second Person, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-12
Updated: 2016-09-12
Packaged: 2018-08-14 14:24:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8017429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyNighteyes/pseuds/LadyNighteyes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The core of the Resistance was Prince Ernst's closest friends, and they stay loyal to his memory. The traitors most of all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ashes

Focus on what's wrong. Yes. That's the best way.

Don't think about the familiar way he runs his hand through his hair. Think about how it's longer, the blond a little less golden. Easy differences to rationalize- it's been five years, and sun could have bleached it- but that's not the point. They're just reminders. This isn't him. Hold onto that.

His eyes are all wrong, cold and blue and unreadable. But don't focus on that, because his gaze is unnerving for entirely different reasons. He looks at people like he's working out the best way to kill them, and the odds that he'll have to. He probably is.

Don't look at his hands, don't think of the young man who'd explained, laughing, that he'd cut the fingers out of his gloves so he could get a better grip for climbing stone walls. Not everyone had known, then, where the walls he'd had to climb to come meet them were.

Don't think about the fleeting, crooked smile back when he was talking to Will in the bar. There's a faint scar on his lower lip on one side, so the line of his mouth isn't quite the same. Remember that. Don't let it taint the memories of another smile like that, just a corner of the mouth quirked up and eyes a little softer.

Pretend you can believe it's a coincidence that his voice sounds the same way Ernst did in private- soft, calm, aristocratic accent with the edges filed off. Tell yourself his voice might be a little lower, and that your stomach doesn't turn at hearing that voice say the things he says.

It's for the best. Hold onto that, too.

The others won't understand. That's all right. Otto would follow the princess into hell if she asked, and Will never really knew Ernst face-to-face. All the rest of the old guard who are left are out of the city, one way or another. Tell yourself you're not betraying them; if anything, you're saving them. Someone who was willing to risk everything you've built for a mercenary isn't worthy of their loyalty.

Forget the hope you felt when the princess turned all of your anger and grief to a cause. Easy enough. It's been years, and a tyrant still reigns uncontested. In the end, has Eruca brought you anything?

There were things that seemed important a few weeks ago, but forget them- everything's burning, so what does any of it matter?

Try not to remember standing beside Ernst- seventeen and already taller than his father- and wondering idly how tall he'd grow up to be.

Don't think about Claire.

Back away out of blade range, and don't let yourself be fooled by how the two of them look next to each other. The way he holds himself is wrong. Ernst had been a good actor, but he always carried himself with the unconscious confidence of someone who took for granted that he could command respect if he had to. And he could never look like a killer, no matter how hard he tried.

(Push back the memories of long-ago summer days when he came by with his sister, and how annoyed he always was that no matter what disguise he tried to use, strangers still assumed he was her brother. As smart as Ernst was, he'd been young, and it showed sometimes.)

The soldiers will be here any second. Stall. Remind yourself they wouldn't dare hurt her- it isn't like Ernst. There's no spare heir they can put on the throne if she dies. They'll ship her out to a country manor and keep her under guard, and the Resistance will collapse without any more loss of life. If anyone else said that to you you'd call them a naive idiot, but try to convince yourself anyway.

She looks out of place next to the others, all stained with soot and blood, but it won't be long until the smoke works its way into her clothes, too.

Blue eyes. Hers wide and full of betrayal, his narrow and calculating. Too far away to see now, but you already know they’re exactly the same color. Force yourself not to think about it- the kind of thoughts that could come from that are exactly what you don't need right now.

(They've always said the royal family had access to strange magics-)

He steps in front of Eruca protectively. Of course he does. He tried to kill her a week ago. Fight down the bubbling, hysterical laughter.

Remember Ernst as you last saw him, skinny and long-legged and still with the last traces of teenage awkwardness about him, and don't think about what he would have looked like in a few years.

You're kidding yourself and you know it.

Even the way he rests his palm on the hilt of his sword is familiar. There's a splatter of fresh blood across the scabbard and you hate him and everything he represents.

Eruca's eyes are still fixed on you. Watch the gun in her hand- it's safer than thinking.

(They're a symbol of nobility and royalty, but you never once saw him with them. You're honestly grateful.)

Slip behind the soldiers, with their familiar round helmets and the blue uniforms of low-level grunts. Crush the part of you that tells you that if you're helping the queen's thugs, you're on the wrong side.

You can't afford to close your eyes, but you would if you could. At least the alley is narrow and you can't see much from the back of the crowd. Move by rote, lighting a grenade and tossing it over their heads to land behind the mercenaries. You can hear cursing after it goes off- the black-haired woman. Don't think about how it could have been the Beastkind child's scream you heard instead.

(Don't think about what might have happened to Claire. Don't think about how excited she was to be given a delivery to make, something helpful to do for the cause. You wish you could believe you'll see her again, but you know better, know that if you do it'll be as a corpse-)

Two of the soldiers fall next to you, fire bursting out of the ground to envelop them. They die screaming. Light a grenade, toss it, don't think. Stupid weapon in an alley this small, even if they don't have enough of a punch to damage masonry. But it's what you've got, and you'd rather not try to fight _that_ with just knives. The crossbowman in front of you shields her eyes with her arm against a hail of bits of wood- you must have hit the crates in the back of the alleyway. Then she slumps, and you dodge on instinct, a bullet humming past where you were standing a moment before.

Fumble out your last grenade, feel a warning prickle in the air, and barely manage to throw it away and cover your face before a fireball explodes in front of you. You don't know who cast it and you don't want to know in case it was _him_.

(Ernst had never been as free with magic as his sister, but in the winter the snow had always melted around him...)

Everything's going wrong, but that's okay, because nothing could ever really be right in a world where little girls die because their brother asked them to run an errand.

Four of them and four of you, not counting the girl, who plays a flute in the back, hooves tapping out a pattern on the stone. Lash out with a knife at the short man in the helmet as he moves in.

A loud clash of metal, and you glance toward it before it occurs to you not to. _He’s_ there, shield up to catch a blow aimed at the princess, and his sword slices into the soldier’s neck before they can get their own shield up to guard.

Four of them and three of you.

Ernst always had a strange style when you saw him spar, a mix of formal duelling techniques learned from tutors and back-alley fighting learned in the city. Look away. It’s easier if you don’t see.

You keep your knives raised as the short mercenary starts to move, but he charges past you, barrelling into a soldier swinging a sword at the black-haired spearwoman. The soldier stumbles into the surviving archer, who fires instinctively, the shot flying wide to clatter off a wall. A beam of white light wider around than your arm and bright enough to leave afterimages blasts through both of them, and they fall, twitching.

Four of them, and one of you. Turn to run.

You take a step and ice crawls up from the ground like a living thing, wrapping around you and digging in.

Pain.

There’s a foot of bloody steel sticking out of you, and you’re grateful, so grateful that you don’t have to die looking at him.

Listen to the roar of the flames.


End file.
